The other day I was driving home from Park City and realized the refrigerator was empty. I stopped at Kamas Foodtown to pick up some groceries. Kamas is still small enough that, as is common in small towns, all important political and business matters are handled at the grocery store, except for the things that are done behind rolled-down windows of pickup trucks parked in the middle of the street.

I was lucky enough to meet Dave Ure at the donut stand and had a great conversation with him.

I know at least a little about three generations of the Ure family. Dave’s father, Ed, was on the board of an irrigation company for many years. In this part of the world, and so long ago, the irrigation company was much more important than the county government.

Our families both owned shares in a grazing cooperative for a time that owned a large tract of land between Oakley and Rockport. Ed made the Marlboro Man look like a wimp.

I knew Dave primarily through his work on the old County Commission and later in the state legislature. There were few political issues we agreed on, but when it came to Summit County’s best interests, he was always there. I enthusiastically voted for him every time he ran for office and would do so again if he didn’t move.

Chris Ure and I served together on the East Side Planning Commission for many years. We clashed at times, but quickly realized that our visions for the future of the East Side were very similar. We just expressed them differently. I ended my term thinking that Chris was a friend and a respected colleague. He then moved on to the County Board of Health.

They sold their family ranch to the county and are in the process of moving. After thanking Dave for his decades of service to the community, we got down to business – what does the new ranch look like? It’s in Missouri, in a magical place where the hay grows and the pastures stay green all on their own. No irrigation at all. No ditch company. No water diversion. No restrictions.

To appreciate the joy of it, you have to know that the Ure Ranch was at the end of a 15-mile ditch system, with perhaps hundreds of weirs and pullouts upstream between them and the water source on the river. Despite a well-regulated system of diversions and measurements, it’s fair to say there’s a lot of “shrinkage” along the way. For 130 years, they fought for every drop. No wonder his father had a reputation for being grumpy.

Dave said people in Missouri don’t even know what a canvas dam is. And the soil is so deep that fence posts can be driven into the ground with a tractor bucket without ever hitting river pebbles, boulders or rock outcrops. Cattle don’t have to be trucked to the desert and back every winter. They stay on the home ranch and grow fat on naturally irrigated pastures.

Their thermometers don’t drop below zero. Under these conditions, it might actually be profitable to run a ranch.

I can’t imagine moving from a ranch that’s been in the family for 130 years. We’ve been on our property about half that long, and I can’t walk along a fence without seeing a sort of horizontal totem of family members and coworkers with different repair techniques — this is my grandfather, this is my uncle. My cousin’s work is easy to spot, as is that of an employee who worked for us for 52 years. The sagging spots are my doing, as he taught me how to repair a fence.

They are all still there in every field and every outbuilding. There are memories at every main gate and every place where I almost ran over a tractor.

The ghosts in Ures’ fields and barns have long been known. It will be very hard to leave, but Dave is looking forward to getting to know the new place and to the idea that Chris’ children and grandchildren may be there in 50 years. I wish them all the best in their new adventure.

As for other ancestry, after all the family discussions about the name of Clyde Lake in the Uintas, I hiked there again and started at the trailhead at Trial Lake.

We visited the historic Maycock family cabin. A family happened to be living there. A very friendly woman invited us to visit the almost 100-year-old cabin. It was very chilly, but we were too late for the pancakes baked on a ZCMI wood stove.

I explained my family connection to the Trial Lake Dam and my disappointment that Clyde Lake was apparently named after Clyde Maycock and not my great-grandfather.

She laughed and said that her family built the cabin in 1926 and by that time everything around it already had a name. Her great uncle, Clyde Maycock, had nothing to do with Clyde Lake other than fishing there. There was even a note on the wall saying so.

So I feel somewhat vindicated, even though it doesn’t matter. Clyde Lake was named after my great-grandfather. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.